


These Seeds Were Sown in Ash and Rubble

by furchte_die_schildkrote



Category: Chaos Walking - Patrick Ness
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 21:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10049822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furchte_die_schildkrote/pseuds/furchte_die_schildkrote
Summary: Mistresses Coyle and Thrace were an unstoppable force: political schemers, soldiers, lovers. Partners in all things until war ended and Thrace was shut out of politics. Thrace turned the Answer against Haven, while Coyle stood against her, shattering their relationship. Thrace has been bombing Haven ever since, leaving Coyle to pick up the pieces.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atreic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreic/gifts).



> Hi atreic! 
> 
> Here is a somewhat belated Yuletide gift! I was so excited to see someone else requesting Mistress Coyle this year. I wasn't able to get through this in time for Actual Yuletide, but I just *had* to finish since I love thinking about what made Coyle the woman we see in canon! Happy belated Yuletide!

It was warm and thickly humid the night Nicola Coyle's life fell to pieces. A heavy cloud of swamp air had crept into Haven, and the air inside the House of Healing managed to be even more suffocating. Every window stood open, every fan ran at full power, and they did not do a damn thing to help. 

A sticky layer of sweat clung to Mistress Coyle's face as she orchestrated the swarm of healers and apprentices, and ran from bed to bed herself with a deft and haggard air that aged her well past her twenty-seven years. Every bed was filled, and the most stable patients lied in makeshift mattresses on floor while help staff and volunteers scavenged more beds around town. Thrace's bombing campaign had flooded every house of healing and every clinic in Haven with cases—blast wounds, crushing injuries, burns—alongside all of the other ailments that would have plagued the town even without bombs going off every other night. Heat exhaustion and dehydration were rampant. A New World disease that seemed to be a rough combination of malaria and dysentery was nearing epidemic levels, a farmer got her hand caught in a grain auger, and three mistresses were out attending to the three women who all went into labor within an hour of each other.

Coyle's whole body ached with exhaustion. It was a hectic, chaotic night—noisy and unpleasant, but she told herself it would be tolerable if it weren't for this damn heat. And the smell. Hell's sewers smelled better than here, and she would sell what was left of her soul for just one sweet sea breeze to sweep through and carry out that stale and putrid haze.

She walked towards her next patient, a young boy who needed a blast wound redressed and examined.

“Jacob, how is your leg feeling?” Coyle asked, forcing a smile.

He mumbled something unintelligible, but whatever he said, she could see from his Noise it was nothing good.

“Once we get this dressing off, we can put some more Jeffer’s root on those bandages. How does that sound?” she said, watching to see if he gave any sort of reaction. He did not. The boy’s father had died the same explosion that brought Jacob to the house of healing a week earlier, and the boy had been nearly catatonic ever since. Coyle unwound the dressing, examining the injury. She looked down at the damage done by the bomb, trying not to think about how that bomb was crafted by the woman whose smile made her see beauty in war, whose hands had run over every inch of her skin, bringing her to ecstasy. She could barely stop herself from cringing when she saw the tell-tale rash on the edges of the healing wound; it signaled a New World infection that still lacked a reliable cure. She sighed as she began re-wrapping it with fresh bandages. 

Suddenly, the roaring blast of yet another explosion went off—shattering the steady buzz of Noise that ran through the house. The walls shook. Coyle could feel the pulse of the blast in her bones.

The tired chaos in the house of healing had transformed into something more purposeful and frantic. Healers cleared whatever beds they could; patients who could sit upright were sat three or four to a bed, and others were moved to makeshift mattresses on the floor. Apprentices prepped the newly emptied beds for the blast and burn victims who would be rushed in within a matter of minutes.

The sound of Jacob wailing and the frantic panic building in his Noise anchored Coyle to the present, even as exhaustion threatened to let her go numb. Images of fire and crumbling barn walls and a man’s burned and mangled body filled the his Noise with stark, vivid detail. Coyle filled a syringe with the largest dose of sedative he could safely take, administered the shot, and ran outside.

Coyle's heart sank at the familiar sight. Smoke rose up toward the night sky while a slow-moving cloud of dust flowed down the streets. Everyone on the street scrambled to their places to pick up the pieces, knowing where they were needed almost instinctively. The terror, the confusion, and the betrayal of the first bombing had mellowed. By now, the chaotic panic had morphed into an organized system that ran with the cool efficiency and coordination that only comes with an agonizing amount of practice.

She no longer had the energy for anger; she had let out all her rage the last time she and Thrace had spoken. Shouted, more like it. She remembered the bitingly cruel words they threw at each other when Thrace planned to use the Answer against Haven, and when she refused to fight for Thrace. How she aimed her barbed insults at Thrace’s most sensitive nerves. How she wanted to see her hurt, and how Thrace had done the same. She remembered sitting and crying and whirring with rage in the pitch dark room while Thrace gathered as many loyal members of the Answer as she could. She remembered letting her go. Now, thirty-two bombings deep into Thrace's personal war against Haven, all she had room for was a heavy sadness that lay somewhere between guilt and sheer exhaustion.

But there was no time for guilt now. All she could do was pick up the debris of Thrace's attacks, piece by piece.

She ran down the street towards the smoke, towards the gathering crowd.

As she ran, the sweat on her skin turned cold. A sinking sense of dread build in her gut. Something was not right. The smoke rose from the middle of the street; the bomb had clearly not been planted on a building. It was powerful enough to bring down the wall of the nearest building, but like all buildings on this block, it was empty at night. But there was something more, some deeper layer of _wrongness_.

A buzz of confusion rose up from the gathering crowd and mingled with a stifling numbness, but the crowd held still. There was no movement of doctors and healers assessing and transporting casualties. No movement to clear rubble.

She forced her way through the crowd, pulling forward in dread of what she would find. Some onlookers seemed to flinch away when they saw her; others glared at her with cold, cautious hate.

Finally, she was through. She saw the mangled heap at the center of the explosion, at the center of the dazed crowd, and gasped at the air. She might as well have been drowning. Coyle recognized Thrace in an instant. 

She ran forward, every step heavier than the last. Her feet seemed to carry her of their own accord, while she stood by and watched. Her insides were hollow, gutted, made of lead.  She knelt down next to Thrace, next to her bloody and broken body. She wanted to run her hand along Thrace's face, to cradle her in her arms, to scream, to shake her until she woke up.

Her body seemed unaware of any of these impulses, as she began examining the extent of Thrace's injuries with mechanical and razor-sharp focus.

Coyle reached to her throat, feeling for a pulse. She gasped in relief. There was a pulse. It was weak, but it was there—a light, thready beat dancing under her fingertips. Her breaths were shallow and haphazard; she was desperately failing to pull in enough air, but she was breathing.

Thrace was alive, somehow. By some miracle. The dizzy joy at that small miracle threatened to break Coyle's focus, but she knew she could not let it. Thrace was alive, but with the scale of her injuries, she would need at least a dozen more miracles to survive the night.

“I need a stretcher up here,” Coyle shouted.

Any other night, with any other patient, the apprentices would already be at her side, moving the patient onto the stretcher and carrying her off. Tonight, Mistress Thrace lay dying in front of them, and the healers surrounding her seemed content to let her pass.

Coyle was alone. She looked up at the crowd gathered a cautious distance—at the healers standing in the crowd, medkits in hand, frozen in place—and a sickening wave of rage and disgust washed over her.

“Don't just stand there. She's alive,” she said, disbelief and disgust building inside her. Thrace brought the carnage, dread, and ruination of war into their home in a way that the Spackle had never done. She was not a soldier. She was a murderer. Coyle understood their paralysis, which made the pain in her gut even more ragged and raw.

Coyle scanned the crowd, searching the faces in the crowd for a hint of sympathy. Or shame. Pity. Anything.

“Please!” she cried out, letting her frantic desperation cut through her voice and contort her face.

Finally, someone stepped forward, with tentative and self-conscious steps. It was one of the apprentices, an older girl named Sarah who took on her apprenticeship within a month of the Spackle War's start and took to healing with a religious zeal. She had found a sacred vocation in healing, and apparently her idealism would not let her stand by and watch a person die. Sarah gingerly knelt down, opened the medkit, and unfolded the stretcher. She passed a roll of gauze and bandages to Coyle, her face full of a resolve that stood in stark contrast to her cautious demeanor.

“Thank you,” Coyle said, her voice wavering before she forced herself back to detached professionalism. Sarah nodded, and together, they began wrapping and splinting the most urgent injuries. In the process, two other healers joined them, both senior mistresses who had been nurses on Old World.

Coyle ran over the injuries again—amazed that she was still breathing with such a broken body—and directed her makeshift team in moving Thrace onto the stretcher. When they lifted the stretcher and walked forward, the crowd parted as if they were afraid to stand too close.

No one stepped forward to stop them. No one ordered them to leave her, to let Thrace die, but there was no hiding the Noise that seeped out from the hushed crowd, stabbing at them like arrows. The acidic bite of _GOT WHAT'S COMING_ and _TRAITOR BITCH_ painted over pictures of Thrace's shattered body colored with relief and celebration _,_ the plummeting weight of disgust and betrayal—they all churned around them, curdling in the swampy night air. 

Coyle and the others pushed forward through the cloud with the somber air of a funeral procession. All they could do was focus on the task at hand with all the stubborn fury they could muster. 

As they reached the House of Healing, Coyle half-expected to find the doors locked. The remaining healers must have been told about who the lone blast victim was, about who Coyle would bring in for treatment any moment now. Instead, the healers ushered them inside and towards bed sectioned off with makeshift curtains.

Once Thrace was on the bed, Coyle felt someone pulling her back by the arm, gently but firmly, and spun around in a fit of impatience. It was Naomi, another mistress; she squeezed Coyle's arm and caught her gaze.

“It really is her, ain't it? How are you holding up?” Naomi asked.

“Better than her. Now let's move,” Coyle said, yanking her arm out of Naomi's grasp.

Naomi's face held nothing but sympathy and gentle kindness, and yet it was still infuriating. Insulting. _Too close to pity_ , Coyle told herself. She could not have her closest allies and friends thinking she was on the cusp of breaking, even if it was true. _Especially_ if it was true. Later, she could crumble under the weight of the rage and grief crashing against the wall she clung to. She could scream as she let the pain overwhelm her. But not yet.

They spent the rest of the night trying to stabilize Thrace, patching up one life-threatening crisis after another with hours upon hours of surgery.

By the time the night sky began to soften into morning, Coyle had passed from exhaustion to numbness. She had been on her feet for nearly twenty-four hours. The longer she stood over Thrace, the more surreal it all seemed. The patient she was operating on—the patient who was so nearly a corpse—was not Thrace. She could not be. The sickly pallor, the blank face, the tangle of tubes and bandages and metal—it was impossible.

And suddenly, after what seemed like both a moment and an eternity, the surgery was done.

Thrace was stable and wheeled off to the far wall of the intensive care ward for observation, like any other patient. All Coyle could do now was wait. Wait for Thrace to come to, or wait for her to succumb to her injuries. Wait for the police to come and bring Thrace's comatose body to justice. Wait for charges to be brought against Coyle herself for wasting precious medical resources on an unrepentant terrorist destined to hang.

Every minute of the past night, Coyle had anchored herself to the present moment. She held the rest of the world at bay while she forced herself to focus on keeping Thrace alive for just a minute longer. One minute after another. Now, the haze that had engulfed her mind melted away, revealing the inescapable reality of the situation. The odds of Thrace surviving her injuries were laughably slim. The odds of her waking up, even slimmer. And if, by some cruel miracle Thrace woke up, she would meet justice at the end of a rope.

Her knees gave out from under her, and she collapsed into a chair placed behind her by a young apprentice. Within a matter of seconds, she was passed out, her hand protectively resting on Thrace's arm even as her head hung limp to her side.

 

* * *

 

While Nicola Coyle slept, a fragile but tangible quiet settled over the house of healing. That morning it seemed as if the women inside developed a Noise of their own, but instead of noise, it materialized as a stunned, numb silence. The oppressive silence even seemed to subdue the Noise of their male patients. The healers shuffled from patient to patient, vacantly carrying out their duties. Even the caseload was noticeably muted after the previous night's rush.

Hushed, infrequent whispers flitted through the quiet.

“You should've seen her last night. Had us all scared to the bone.”

“I hear her accomplices came crawling out of the woods at first light. Gave themselves up, just like that.”

“No way they would just give up. Not after all that.”

“What do you think they're gonna do to her?”

“Old man Jeremiah at the butcher's shop says if Thrace ain't dead by sundown, him and his son will do it themselves.”

“I mean Mistress Coyle.”

 

* * *

 

After a few meager hours, the sound of men on horseback broke Coyle’s fitful sleep. She bolted upright, her head still swimming in dazed exhaustion.

A man walked into the house of healing, and greeted one of the healers by the door. It was the recently elected Mayor Lawson—the peacetime mayor for a time of peace who was handed a fight that no one wanted. After a few seconds of tense, hushed conversation, she begrudgingly pointed the man towards Coyle. He tipped his hat and gestured for the other men to stay outside before striding forward.

His face held steady with the measured diplomacy of a politician, but his Noise betrayed a  rush of thrilled curiosity when he got a clear view of Thrace in that bed, still deeply unconscious. His Noise practically danced at the sight.

“That was quite some feat you pulled last night, Nicola” he said, his tone bright and friendly, even as his Noise rustled and chafed. 

“Mayor Lawson,” Coyle responded curtly. She had never had much patience with oblique political small talk, but now it was just insulting. 

“You know, when I first heard the news, I could scarcely believe it. Hell, I don't think I fully believed until I walked in here and saw her.” He watched her reactions with every word, every sentence, visibly ruffled by Coyle’s uncertain allegiances.

She answered with a cold, glaring silence.

“They said she was as good as dead,” he said, an accusatory tone cutting through his voice. 

“What can I say? I'm a good healer,” she shrugged while keeping a hollow glare drilled on Lawson. 

“And a damn good leader. You've got a promising political career, Nicola.” He pulled a chair over, so that he sat facing Coyle.

Any other day, she would have found the bureaucratic slime in his smile laughable. Pathetic, at worst. But today, with him thinking he could use her seat on the council as a bargaining chip--it sent a blaze of fiery disgust tearing through her.

“And now it's done,” she said.

“It doesn't have to be that way. Haven needs someone with your brains and political know-how. I know we've had our differences—”

Coyle scoffed.

“Listen,” he pushed on, dropping his voice to a hush. His Noise buzzed in annoyance, “After all this—the war, Thrace's attacks, that mess down in New Elizabeth. Tensions are high enough as it is. We don't need anything else driving this world apart. I'm offering you an olive branch here. I can pull some strings in the Judiciary Committee, get you a temporary suspension. You acted rashly to protect someone you had a history with. Someone you care about. People will understand. You just have to step away while you still can. Denounce Thrace and all her violence. You can write off last night as a fit of mania.”

“You're a coward, you know that?” she said, in a soft and measured voice, even as she felt her cheeks burn in anger.

“It's not just your _career_ at stake.” He stood up, his Noise buzzing more and more angrily with each passing minute. “You aided an enemy of the state. And that,” he said, pointing to the blood transfusion bag hanging above Thrace, “that blood came from someone she tried to kill for her own political agenda. Maybe from someone she did kill.”

“I can't defend her actions, but even enemies of the state need blood.”

“You saved the life of a murderer.”

“I did my job!” she said, her voice rising as she stood. After a few moments, composed herself, returning to her firm, biting monotone. “I knew exactly what I was doing, and if I could go back to last night, I would do it again. Now, you come back when she's fit to be moved, I won't stop you. Until then, she's in my custody.”

Coyle turned to Thrace and began checking her bandages, her IV drips, her stat monitors. There was nothing to do for Thrace that an apprentice could not do, but she had to do _something_ , if only to prove a point to Mayor Lawson.

After several seconds of frustrated posturing, he nodded. “There will be an officer stationed by this house of healing at all times. And Thrace will be ready to move by tomorrow night.”

Coyle let a cold, acerbic smile break across her lips. That man never did have a spine.

“I'll do my job. You do yours,” Coyle said. As the mayor turned to leave, she added, “Your job, I trust you'll remember, is being sure Mistress Thrace faces the _town's_ justice, not the mob's. After all, you're the one who kept reminding us this is peacetime. Civility must reign over lawlessness.”

Coyle was almost embarrassed at the smug thrill his petulant expression sent through her as he left the house of healing.

She fell back into her chair as soon as Lawson was out the door.

Seeing how she had wounded his pride felt like a small victory; although, that was cold comfort in the wake of what she knew lay ahead. She had killed her political career, something she had spent all seven years on this godforsaken planet building, all in the course of a night. And for what? She bought Thrace another week at most. What was she supposed to tell Thrace when she wakes up? What if she never wakes up?

Coyle sighed. She had made her choice, and as hard as she tried, she could not regret it. She leaned back and took Thrace's hand in hers; she squeezed it, and for a brief second, she could have sworn she felt her squeeze back.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate titles include:
> 
> My Life as the Ex-Girlfriend of a Domestic Terrorist
> 
> [Just all of the lyrics to "Let It Go". The whole damn song.]
> 
> Check out These Bombshells


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